Pennacchio wants to beef up FY17 pension payment by $500M

By The Staff | The Save Jersey Blog

New Jersey State Sen. Joe Pennacchio (R-Morris) is preparing a resolution to add $500 million to Governor Chris Christie’s FY 2017 proposed record $1.9 billion pension payment, Save Jerseyans.

He also plans to do it without proposing a tax hike.

budget“New Jersey Republicans have always said we will support making the biggest, fiscally responsible state pension payment,” Pennacchio explained in a Wednesday statement. “I endorse freezing all spending in the governor’s FY17 budget as he proposed it and eliminating any of the usual requests for legislators’ spending additions. As long as there are no fiscal emergencies in the next couple of months, we can increase the governor’s proposed record-high pension payment by as much as $500 million and keep the same surplus we have had in recent years. We can do this without raising taxes, cutting public services and jeopardizing job growth.”

How? Using funds from a larger-than-anticipated $800 million surplus and still leaving approximately $300 million from the surplus untouched.

“If Democrats are serious about mandating greater pension payments, such as SCR-2, this budget resolution should be supported and all other legislative add-ons in this year’s FY17 budget process should be prohibited,” Pennacchio added. “To focus only on increased pension payments and avoid new spending, that requires the fiscal discipline that Democrats often struggle with but will be required in SCR-2. We will see what Democrats’ real priorities are if they can’t focus all of their spending requests on this one item as I am, or maybe it will show SCR-2 to just be political theater.”

Yea or nay, Save Jerseyans?

____

admin
About admin 1753 Articles
SAVE JERSEY supplies its readers with news, analysis and commentary from guest contributors as well as some of the Internet's best political content providers on a daily basis.

5 Comments

  1. Until the government moves to reconfigure the plan, eliminate the double and triple dipping and the ones who should not be on it not a dime. Maybe declaring it insolvent ight stir things up.

  2. It’s always Democrat “political theater”…and thing they can shout about as being “the fault of the Republicans” they will and their constituents will believe it as the media will never articulate what is really going on.

  3. It will always be the fault of the “wascawwy Wepubwicans” – at least until such time that most Republicans (and many of the G0Pe D0pes) no longer live here.

Comments are closed.